Analytics

Heatmaps Don't Just Belong On Websites

September 15, 2025

Multi-million pound planning decisions are left unvalidated. We would never ship a website without analytics - yet commercial real estate, a sector contributing £74 billion annually to the UK economy, rarely applies the same behavioural rigour to its physical assets.

The Spend Is Huge. The Scrutiny Is Not.

Web development reached $70.6 billion in 2024 with projections to $141 billion by 2033. Heatmapping tools are nearly universal among serious digital marketing teams. Meanwhile, commercial real estate - a multi-trillion-dollar global sector - rarely benefits from comparable behavioural analytics despite significantly larger financial commitments per decision.

Why CRE Still Flies Blind

Only 54% of commercial real estate leaders use consumer behaviour data, and 58% report missing business opportunities due to insufficient data. Teams struggle with data quality, technical complexity, and a lack of internal expertise. Most lack workplace analytics technology and maintain disconnected systems, resulting in sporadic manual counts and unreliable measurements.

Cameras, Reimagined as Privacy-First Sensors

Fyma activates existing cameras as privacy-compliant analytics tools without requiring new hardware. Computer vision measures footfall, dwell time, paths, queue durations, utilisation, and anomalies with higher accuracy than traditional sensors. Faces remain unidentified - outputs appear as aggregated metrics and board-ready visualisations.

What to Measure First

Start with footfall and dwell time, paths and desire lines, queue time at critical points, utilisation metrics for key amenities, and anomaly detection for safety concerns. These five metric types combine to reveal experience and efficiency patterns with direct financial implications across almost every building type.

The Cost of Guessing

A revolving door costs approximately £200,000. A retail lease can exceed £100,000 annually. Mixed-use sites may receive five million annual visitors. Without analytics, true circulation patterns remain unmeasured despite these financial stakes. Even small improvements in utilisation yield returns that dwarf the cost of measurement.

From Pilot to Portfolio in Weeks

Baseline current conditions across two or three representative zones. Introduce one measured change. Compare before-and-after results. Package findings in a board-ready report. Then scale successful interventions using portfolio benchmarking to maintain accuracy and comparability across every asset.

A Simple Start That Signals a New Standard

Select one asset with three zones. Connect existing cameras. Define the KPIs that matter to your next major decision. Measure for four weeks, then iterate. Share the results internally before scaling across the estate. The marginal cost of measurement at scale is low - the marginal cost of guessing is not.